Page 25 (part 2)

It is useless and vain for the Protestants to exclaim against the Roman Catholics for their "Mariolatry," based on the ancient cult of lunar goddesses, when they themselves worship Jehovah, pre-eminently a lunar god, and when both Churches have accepted in their theologies the " Sun "-Christ and the lunar trinity. What is known of Chaldaean Moon-Worship, of the Babylonian god, Sin , called by the Greeks "Deus Lunus," is very little, and that little is apt to mislead the profane student who fails to grasp the esoteric significance of the symbols. As popularly known to the ancient profane philosophers and writers (for those who were initiated were pledged to silence) the Chaldaea were the worshippers of the moon under her (and his ) various names, just as were the Jews, who came after them. In the unpublished MSS . on the Art Speech, already mentioned, giving a key to the formation of the ancient (symbolical) languages a logical raison d ' etre is brought forward for this double worship. It is written by a wonderfully well-informed and acute scholar and Mystic, who gives it in the comprehensive form of a hypothesis. The latter, however, becomes forcibly a proven fact in the history of religious [[Vol. 1, Page]] 389 A KEY NOTE TO THE MOON. evolution in human thought, to anyone who has ever had a glimpse into the secret of ancient Symbology. Thus, he says: -- "One of the first occupations among men, connected with those of actual necessity, would be the perception of time periods,* marked on the vaulted arch of the heavens sprung and rising over the level floor of the horizon, or the plain of still water. These would come to be marked as those of day and night, of the phases of the moon, of its stellar or synodic revolutions, and of the period of the solar year with recurrence of the seasons, and with the application to such periods of the natural measure of day or night, or of the day divided into the light and the dark. It would also be discovered that there was a longest and shortest solar day, and two solar days of equal day and night, within the period of the solar year; and the points in the year of these could be marked with the greatest precision in the starry groups of the heavens or the constellations, subject to that retrograde movement thereof, which in time would require a correction by intercalation, as was the case in the description of the Flood, where correction of 150 days was made for a period of 600 years, during which confusion of landmarks had increased. . . . This would naturally come to pass . . . . with all races in all time; and such knowledge must be taken to have been inherent in the human race, prior to what we call the historic period. . . . ." On this basis, the author seeks for some natural physical function possessed in common by the human race, and connected with the periodical manifestations, such that "the connection between the two kinds of phenomena . . . became fixed in popular usage." He finds it "( a ) in the feminine physiological phenomena every lunar month of 28 days, or" 4 weeks of 7 days each, so that 13 occurrences of the period should happen in 364 days, which is the solar week year of 52 weeks of 7 days each. ( b ) The quickening of the foetus is marked by a period of 126 days, or 18 weeks of 7 days each. ( c ) That period which is called "the period of viability" is one of 210 days, or 30 weeks of 7 days each. ( d ) The period of parturition is accomplished in 280 days, or a period of 40 weeks of 7 days each, or 10 lunar months of 28 days each, or of 9 calendar months of 31 days each, counting on the royal arch of heavens for the measure of the period of traverse from the darkness of the womb to the light and glory of conscious existence, that continuing inscrutable mystery and miracle . . . Thus the observed periods of time marking the workings of the birth function would naturally become a basis of astronomical calculation . . . We may almost affirm . . . that this was the mode of reckoning among all nations, either independently, or intermediately and indirectly by tuition. It was the mode with the Hebrews, for even to-day they calculate the calendar by means of the 354 and 355 of the lunar year, and we possess a special evidence that it was the mode with the ancient Egyptians, as to which this is the proof: -- [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Ancient Mythology includes ancient Astronomy as well as Astrology. The planets were the hands pointing out, on the dial of our solar system, the hours of certain periodical events. Thus, Mercury was the messenger appointed to keep time during the daily solar and lunar phenomena, and was otherwise connected with the God and Goddess of Light. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 390 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. "The basic idea underlying the religious philosophy of the Hebrews was that God contained all things within himself*; and that man was his image, man including woman . . . The place of the man and woman with the Hebrews was among the Egyptians occupied by the bull and the cow, sacred to Osiris and Isis,** who were represented, respectively, by a man having a bull's head, and a woman having the head of a cow, which symbols were worshipped. Notoriously Osiris was the Sun and the river Nile, the tropical year of 365 days, which number is the value of the word Neilos , and the bull, as he was also the principle of fire and of life-giving force, while Isis was the Moon, the bed of the river Nile, or the Mother Earth, for the parturient energies of which water was a necessity, the lunar year of 354-364 days, the time-maker of the periods of gestation, and the cow marked by, or with, the crescent new moon." . . . . "But the use of the cow of the Egyptians for the women of the Hebrews was not intended as of any radical difference of signification, but a concurrence in the teaching intended, and merely as a substitution of a symbol of common import, which was this, viz., the period of parturition with the cow and the woman was held to be the same, or 280 days, or ten lunar months of four weeks each. And in this period consisted the essential value of this animal symbol, whose mark was that of the crescent moon.*** . . . These parturient and natural periods are found to have been subjects of symbolism all over the world. They were thus used by the Hindus, and are found to be most plainly set forth by the ancient Americans, in the Richardson and Gest tablets, in the Palenque Cross; and manifestly lay at the base of the formation of the calendar forms of the Mayas of Yucatan, the Hindus, the Assyrians, and the ancient Babylonians, as well as the Egyptians and old Hebrews. The natural symbols . . .